The Ben Shapiro Show - The Greatest SCANDAL In Modern Presidential History

00:00:00.000 Folks, the reason that Donald Trump is president-elect is because the last several years saw the biggest scandal in presidential history.

00:00:06.000 I'm going to explain that in a moment.

00:00:07.000 Before we begin, my team and I would love to hear from you to make sure we're delivering the content and analysis you value the most.

00:00:13.000 Please take a moment to complete our short survey.

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00:00:17.000 All righty, so the reason that Donald Trump is president-elect again is not just because Donald Trump is a unique figure, out of the box, historically, figuratively.

00:00:25.000 All that is true, obviously.

00:00:27.000 The biggest reason that Donald Trump is president-elect again is because Joe Biden was dead.

00:00:32.000 The entire presidency and everyone knew it and the media lied about it and the White House lied about it.

00:00:38.000 Now it can finally be said because Joe Biden is exiting office.

00:00:40.000 This should be the biggest presidential scandal in history because unlike Woodrow Wilson and Edith Wilson.

00:00:46.000 Woodrow, back during his second term, basically had a stroke and was completely incapacitated and Edith was running the country.

00:00:53.000 At that time, the media was fairly small.

00:00:56.000 There was not a lot of transparency to the public.

00:00:59.000 It does not require the collusion of thousands of people in order to cover up what was happening to Woodrow Wilson.

00:01:05.000 FDR was functional basically until he died.

00:01:09.000 Situations like what have happened with Joe Biden have never happened in the modern media age.

00:01:13.000 But it happened and the cover-up was extraordinary.

00:01:15.000 And now it can be said.

00:01:16.000 The Wall Street Journal had a long piece yesterday titled, How the White House Functioned with a Diminished Biden in Charge.

00:01:21.000 Now, by the way, what this means normally is the 25th Amendment should have been applied to Joe Biden.

00:01:27.000 His cabinet should have said he is no longer capable of holding this office and they should have made Kamala Harris president, but they didn't have the stones to do it.

00:01:33.000 And so instead, they've allowed this diminished president, this person whose brain is not functional, continuing in the office of the presidency of the United States, the most important office on planet Earth, simply because they didn't have the actual guts to oust him.

00:01:48.000 So instead, they hid it.

00:01:50.000 They hid it from the American public.

00:01:51.000 And here's the thing.

00:01:52.000 We all knew it.

00:01:53.000 I think the amount of damage that did to the Democratic ticket this year is almost incalculable.

00:01:58.000 Because no matter how many times Democrats called Republicans liars or a threat to the Republic, no matter how much they said that Donald Trump was not normal, it turns out, you know, what's the most not normal thing?

00:02:07.000 Keeping a corpse in the White House like Weekend at Bernie's, wheeling him around, press conference to press conference, wheeling him out and wheeling him in and pretending he's sentient while the rest of the public can see everything that's happening.

00:02:20.000 It was one of the great emperor's new clothes moments in American history.

00:02:23.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, the White House told visitors to keep meetings focused.

00:02:31.000 Interactions with senior Democratic leaders and some cabinet members, including powerful secretaries like Defense Lloyd Austin and Treasury's Janet Yellen, were infrequent or grew less frequent.

00:02:40.000 Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president's ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.'s disastrous plot from Afghanistan.

00:02:45.000 That's really early, guys.

00:02:47.000 The disastrous pullout from Afghanistan was September 2021. That was the very beginning of his presidency.

00:02:53.000 So pretty much from the moment he entered office, he was so diminished that cabinet members were not meeting with him and neither were members of the legislature.

00:03:00.000 And it's not as though anything was important happening, you know, like the pullout from Afghanistan, like October 7th, or like inflation at a 40-year high.

00:03:07.000 He couldn't be bothered.

00:03:08.000 And the Democratic Party couldn't be bothered.

00:03:10.000 Because they were so high on their own supply.

00:03:12.000 They believed that the American public hated Donald Trump so much that they could literally pretend that this mummy was president of the United States and functional even though we could all see that he was not.

00:03:21.000 And the media went along with it.

00:03:23.000 I'm not sure if there's a bigger political scandal or a bigger media scandal.

00:03:27.000 Again, I sort of repeat myself here because, as I've said many times, there is a Democrat media human centipede in which the Democratic Party decides what are the issues that matter most, and the media just repeat the mad nauseam.

00:03:37.000 The legacy media are just stenographers for the Democratic Party.

00:03:41.000 For both of them, it's a massive scandal.

00:03:44.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, senior advisors were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people like National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Senior Counselor Steve Reschetti, and National Economic Council Head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.

00:04:01.000 So he wouldn't meet with people.

00:04:03.000 Instead, there'd be a go-between.

00:04:05.000 Now, the thing is, the go-between was probably making the policy because Joe Biden was not functional.

00:04:10.000 Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president.

00:04:15.000 The president wasn't even talking to his own pollsters as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race.

00:04:20.000 No wonder Joe Biden thought he was winning.

00:04:21.000 He wasn't even shown the polls.

00:04:24.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, presidents always have gatekeepers, but in Biden's case, the walls around him were higher and the controls greater, according to Democratic lawmakers, donors, and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations.

00:04:34.000 There were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him, limits around the sources of information he consumed.

00:04:40.000 They treated him like a toddler.

00:04:41.000 They treated him the way I treat my four-year-old.

00:04:44.000 They pre-screened all the material.

00:04:47.000 They gave him an anodyne world in which everything was hunky-dory and no one could see that he was diminished.

00:04:53.000 The White House operated this way even as the president and his aides pressed forward with his re-election bid.

00:04:58.000 This accounts of how the White House functioned with an aging leader at the top of its organizational chart is based on interviews with nearly 50 people, including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations.

00:05:06.000 And by the way, I'm here for all the tell-all books that are going to be coming out over the course of the next three years demonstrating the extent of this extraordinary scandal.

00:05:14.000 And it really is an extraordinary, extraordinary scandal.

00:05:18.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees, and other high-ranking officials.

00:05:26.000 It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public.

00:05:29.000 The strategies to protect Biden largely worked until June 27th, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump, searching for words unable to complete his thoughts on live television.

00:05:38.000 Much of the Democratic establishment had accepted the White House line that Biden was able to take the fight to Trump, even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary.

00:05:45.000 Well, that does raise the question, why would they think that?

00:05:47.000 Why would they think that?

00:05:48.000 You knew that he was gone.

00:05:50.000 I knew that he was gone.

00:05:52.000 We've been making this point since before he took office the first time.

00:05:57.000 What exactly was new?

00:05:59.000 The answer is nothing.

00:06:00.000 As I said, after that debate, the reason the media turned on Joe Biden was not because a light bulb had gone off and suddenly they realized that Joe Biden was not mentally capable.

00:06:12.000 What happened is they were embarrassed.

00:06:13.000 They're embarrassed because now it was clear to everyone just how incapable the president of the United States actually was.

00:06:19.000 They were embarrassed.

00:06:20.000 It's always been about their profile with the American public and they thought they could get away with it.

00:06:27.000 And then Joe Biden pants them, and that embarrassed them, and they didn't like it, and they turned on Joe Biden.

00:06:32.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Biden, staff with advisors since he became a senator at age 30, came to the White House with a small team of fiercely loyal, long-serving aides who knew him and Washington so well they could be particularly effective proxies.

00:06:43.000 They did not tolerate criticism of Biden's performance or broader dissent within the Democratic Party, especially when it came to the president's decision to run for a second term.

00:06:51.000 Yet a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden's advanced age had arisen early on, in just the first few months of his term.

00:06:58.000 Administration officials noticed the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.

00:07:04.000 Okay, again, he was not up to the rigors of the job from basically day one.

00:07:09.000 Ideally, meetings would start later in the day.

00:07:11.000 Since Biden has never been at his best first thing in the morning, some of the people said, what, he wasn't a morning person?

00:07:17.000 That's the excuse?

00:07:17.000 He wasn't a morning person?

00:07:19.000 His brain didn't work.

00:07:21.000 And y'all lied about it for years until he exposed himself on national television like a predator outside a child's playground mentally.

00:07:29.000 His staff made these adjustments to limit potential missteps by Biden, the people said.

00:07:33.000 The president, known for long rambling sessions, at times pushed in the opposite direction, wanting or just taking more time.

00:07:39.000 If the president was having an off day, meetings would be scrapped altogether.

00:07:42.000 And this is what happens when people get older and their brain doesn't work as well as it used to.

00:07:46.000 They have good days and they have bad days.

00:07:48.000 On one such occasion in the spring of 2021. Spring 2021. Listen to how early this is.

00:07:53.000 Again, the media wanted you to believe that he only fell apart in 2024. Spring 2021. He was elected in winter 2020. He took office in January 2021. Spring 2021 would have been like April.

00:08:07.000 That's three months into his term.

00:08:10.000 He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day, so we're going to address this tomorrow, the former aide recalled the official saying.

00:08:16.000 Adam Smith of Washington found when he tried to share his concerns with the president ahead of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 that Biden was very hard to reach.

00:08:25.000 He was the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, and he was alarmed by what he viewed as overly optimistic comments from Biden as the administration assembled plans for the operation.

00:08:32.000 I was begging them to set expectations low, said Smith.

00:08:35.000 He sought to talk with Biden directly to share his insights about the region, but couldn't get on the phone with him.

00:08:40.000 After the disastrous withdrawal, Smith made a critical comment to the Washington Post about the administration lacking a clear-eyed view of the U.S.-backed Ashraf Ghani government's durability.

00:08:49.000 It was among comments that triggered an angry phone call from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who ended up getting an earful from the frustrated chairman.

00:08:56.000 Shortly after Smith got an apologetic call from Biden, it was the only call Biden ever made to Smith in four years.

00:09:03.000 Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said his interactions with the White House in the past two years were primarily focused on the reauthorization of FISA. Biden's senior advisors and other top administration officials worked with Himes on the issue.

00:09:15.000 He praised the collaboration, but Biden was not part of the conversation.

00:09:21.000 One lawmaker who did get one-on-one time with Biden noticed the president lacked stamina and relied heavily on staff.

00:09:27.000 Senator Joe Manchin, He said that the job required a level of energy he wasn't sure Biden had been able to sustain.

00:09:33.000 Quote, I just thought maybe the president just lost that fight.

00:09:36.000 The ability to continue to stay on.

00:09:38.000 Just grind it, grind it, grind it.

00:09:39.000 He said Biden's staff played a much bigger role in driving his agenda than he had experienced in other administrations.

00:09:47.000 And they were all lying.

00:09:48.000 Janet Yellen went out there and said he was totally fine.

00:09:51.000 Kamala Harris went out there and said he was totally fine before stabbing him directly between the shoulder blades and throwing his body off the back of the boat. 0.96

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00:12:11.000 But Treasury Secretary Yellen, who was out there saying that he was totally fine, also according to the Wall Street Journal, quote, had an arm's length relationship with the president for much of the administration.

00:12:20.000 She was part of the economics team that regularly briefed the president, but one-on-one discussions were rare.

00:12:24.000 She typically dealt with the National Economic Council or with the president's advisors, rather than Biden directly, according to people familiar with the interactions.

00:12:31.000 Some current and former administration officials said they would have expected a closer relationship between the two.

00:12:38.000 Over four years, Biden held nine full cabinet meetings.

00:12:41.000 Nine in four years.

00:12:43.000 By contrast, in the first terms, Obama had 19 and Trump had 25. He had nine.

00:12:50.000 He had one in all of 2024. One.

00:12:55.000 Again, it is just amazing that they thought they could get away with this.

00:12:58.000 Biden's team also insulated him on the campaign trail, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:13:01.000 In the summer of 2023, one prominent Democratic donor put together a small event for Biden's re-elect bid.

00:13:06.000 The donor was shocked when a campaign official told him the attendees should not expect to have a free-ranging Q&A session with the president.

00:13:13.000 Instead, the organizer was told to send in two or three questions ahead of time that Joe Biden would answer.

00:13:18.000 At some events, the Biden campaign printed pre-approved questions on note cards and gave donors the cards to read the questions.

00:13:24.000 Even with all the steps, Biden made flubs.

00:13:26.000 Some donors said they noticed how staff stepped in to mask other signs of decline.

00:13:30.000 Throughout his presidency, Biden was assisted by a small group of aides who were laser focused on him in a far different way than when he was VP or how former presidents Bill Clinton or Obama were staffed during their presidencies.

00:13:40.000 These aides were often with the president as he traveled.

00:13:43.000 They stayed within earshot or eye distance.

00:13:45.000 They would often repeat basic instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a station.

00:13:49.000 I remember it was cheap fakes.

00:13:51.000 We showed video on this show repeatedly for years that Joe Biden was losing it.

00:13:55.000 And these were cheap fakes, according to the White House and, for a while, the legacy media.

00:14:00.000 Every time you pointed out, for example, that Joe Biden had to be guided offstage, this was apparently you just being mean.

00:14:08.000 Obviously, he didn't need to be guided off the stage.

00:14:10.000 It was just people being nice to him.

00:14:11.000 When Barack Obama had a giant fundraiser, Guided him physically off the stage.

00:14:17.000 Joe Biden froze up on the stage and Joe Biden had to physically be guided off the stage by Barack Obama.

00:14:21.000 And we all pointed it out.

00:14:22.000 We were told that was a cheap fake by the legacy media.

00:14:26.000 The president's team of pollsters had limited access to Biden.

00:14:30.000 By the 2024 campaign, pollsters were not talking to the president about their findings.

00:14:34.000 Instead, they sent memos that went to top campaign staff.

00:14:38.000 This summer, Democratic insiders became alarmed by the way Biden described his own polling, publicly characterizing the race as a toss-up when polls released in the weeks after the disastrous June debate consistently showed Trump ahead.

00:14:48.000 They worried he wasn't getting an unvarnished look at his standing in the race.

00:14:51.000 And then apparently, on July 11th, when Biden's top advisors met behind closed doors with Democratic senators and the advisors laid out a roadmap for Biden's victory, the message was so disconnected from public polling that it left Democratic senators incredulous.

00:15:04.000 It spurred Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to speak to Biden directly.

00:15:08.000 Now the thing about all of this is that we knew all of this.

00:15:10.000 This is the part that makes it scandalous.

00:15:12.000 We all knew it.

00:15:13.000 It was all right there.

00:15:14.000 They are so brazen in the media.

00:15:15.000 They were so brazen in this White House.

00:15:17.000 They thought they could get away with all of it.

00:15:19.000 They urinated on the leg of the American public and they told us that it was raining.

00:15:23.000 That's what this was.

00:15:24.000 And now, now it can be said.

00:15:26.000 Now the thing can be said.

00:15:27.000 And this, by the way, is a pattern in the legacy media.

00:15:30.000 The now it can be said thing.

00:15:32.000 So for years, we were told transgender medicine was a life-saving protocol.

00:15:37.000 And then it turns out, as Britain is banning transgender medicine, one of the great misnomers in human history, for minors, now all of a sudden you're getting editorials from the Washington Post saying, hey, you know... 1.00

00:15:48.000 There might be some problems with this.

00:15:50.000 Now what can be said?

00:15:51.000 If you're in the business of now it can be said, you are a liar by nature.

00:15:55.000 Now it can be said is a lie because it could have been said at the time.

00:16:00.000 You fundamentally betrayed your job and you don't get credit for coming out after Joe Biden's term is basically over and saying the thing.

00:16:07.000 You don't get credit for that.

00:16:09.000 America was running on autopilot with Joe Biden's aides figuring out foreign policy and domestic policy and Joe Biden in the other room sleeping And we're supposed to believe that you get to do the, oh, well, at least now we're burying our souls.

00:16:25.000 The media are always late and they are always wrong, which is not a mistake.

00:16:29.000 It means that they are wrong in the moment.

00:16:32.000 They are wrong in the moment, in the time that it matters.

00:16:34.000 Because it doesn't matter now whether Joe Biden was senile or not.

00:16:36.000 He's leaving in less than a month.

00:16:39.000 It matters a little bit.

00:16:40.000 They should 25th Amendment today because you really shouldn't have a day where the president is non-functional.

00:16:45.000 But...

00:16:46.000 It doesn't matter all that much.

00:16:47.000 You know when it mattered?

00:16:48.000 It mattered in 2021 when the United States was losing soldiers in Afghanistan because Joe Biden was non-compos mentis.

00:16:55.000 You know when it mattered?

00:16:56.000 It mattered throughout the Gaza war when a diminished Joe Biden was threatening Israel with arms cutoffs.

00:17:01.000 You know when it mattered?

00:17:02.000 It mattered during this entire Ukraine war when Joe Biden was simultaneously suggesting that we were going to endlessly fund the Ukraine war and also that there was no off-ramp that he could name.

00:17:13.000 In fact, it matters an awful lot.

00:17:14.000 It matters because the presidency matters an awful lot.

00:17:17.000 You wonder why Donald Trump was re-elected?

00:17:19.000 This is a major factor.

00:17:21.000 Joe Biden's mental status meant that it suddenly became palatable to Americans to look at Donald Trump as normal.

00:17:28.000 That was always the left's Shtick.

00:17:31.000 Their shtick was, Donald Trump is not normal.

00:17:33.000 You can't hand that guy power.

00:17:34.000 He's not normal.

00:17:35.000 But here's the thing.

00:17:36.000 Donald Trump has now been the most normal person in politics for several years.

00:17:41.000 Why?

00:17:42.000 Because of Joe Biden.

00:17:43.000 Because of the Democrats.

00:17:44.000 That is why.

00:17:44.000 Because of the media.

00:17:46.000 I've never seen Institutions on the left blow out their credibility the way they have over the past three years for literally nothing.

00:17:53.000 For literally nothing.

00:17:54.000 They got nothing in return.

00:17:55.000 They got a terrible administration from a diminished elderly man. 1.00

00:17:59.000 And just to add a cherry on top of that sundae, they did it on behalf of Kamala Harris, an absolute trash heap of a candidate who with a billion and a half dollars and a glide path to the presidency couldn't land the plane. 1.00

00:18:11.000 That is what they got.

00:18:12.000 They got nothing in return.

00:18:14.000 And they should get nothing in return.

00:18:16.000 Chris Chaliza.

00:18:17.000 Of the Washington Post.

00:18:18.000 He has now come out and apologized.

00:18:20.000 I said, oh, you know, you know, we probably should have said something.

00:18:22.000 Apology not accepted, Captain Nita.

00:18:25.000 No, you do not get to apologize now.

00:18:27.000 Not even with your dumb blue glasses.

00:18:28.000 You don't get to apologize.

00:18:30.000 You should have done it in the moment.

00:18:31.000 It is no longer relevant.

00:18:33.000 It's no longer relevant.

00:18:34.000 This is, you know, if Walter Durante shows up in 1952 and says, hey, by the way, I'm sorry I screwed up that whole coverage of the Ukrainian famine thing.

00:18:42.000 It doesn't matter no more.

00:18:44.000 You apologizing for not having reported the thing we all knew.

00:18:47.000 And by the way, called us liars for noting.

00:18:49.000 No, apology not accepted.

00:18:52.000 As a reporter, I have a confession to make.

00:18:55.000 I should have pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden's mental and physical well-being and any signs of decline.

00:19:08.000 Okay, I'm sorry, but no.

00:19:11.000 The answer is no.

00:19:11.000 No.

00:19:12.000 You don't get to lie for years on end and then be like, oh yeah, by the way, by the way, sorry.

00:19:17.000 All your credibility is down the toilet and gone.

00:19:17.000 No.

00:19:20.000 Okay, well, the good news is that this giant presidential lie, this enormous, enormous lie.

00:19:26.000 Again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist guy, but the conspiracy was right out in the open.

00:19:31.000 It was a conspiracy between members of the White House and members of the Democratic Congress and members of the media to cover up Joe Biden's mental condition.

00:19:38.000 That does not require any speculation.

00:19:40.000 That is a fact.

00:19:41.000 That is a reality.

00:19:43.000 The consequences of the unraveling of that conspiracy, which you can all see right in front of our eyes, again, the single worst decision, I think, in modern American political history was Joe Biden daring Donald Trump to debate him.

00:19:53.000 Truly an awful decision.

00:19:55.000 And the reason that Joe Biden did it is because Joe Biden had such an ironclad bubble that he actually believed he was fine.

00:20:02.000 He was the only person in the room who didn't know that he wasn't well.

00:20:06.000 It's an amazing thing.

00:20:08.000 Anyway, the consequence of that was, of course, Donald Trump becoming president.

00:20:11.000 And I got to say, going into the new year, I am super optimistic about the Trump presidency.

00:20:16.000 Last night, I had the opportunity to speak at the Turning Point Summit America Fest over in Phoenix, Arizona.

00:20:22.000 And man, I have to say, Charlie Kirk, that dude knows how to put on a show.

00:20:26.000 So Charlie, I've known Charlie since Charlie was 18 years old.

00:20:29.000 Really, I mean, he's only 31 now, which is pretty incredible.

00:20:32.000 Charlie was 18 years old when I met him.

00:20:34.000 Just a brash young kid, really smart, real go-getter.

00:20:37.000 He was hanging around the David Horowitz Freedom Center conference at the Breakers near here in Palm Beach.

00:20:43.000 And I met Charlie and I immediately started hooking him up with donors because I said, this dude is going to be the head of the RNC one day.

00:20:48.000 He was obviously aggressive.

00:20:49.000 He knew what he was doing.

00:20:50.000 He knew how to work a room.

00:20:52.000 Good principles.

00:20:53.000 Well, Charlie has built an amazing organization in Turning Point.

00:20:56.000 And this AmericaFest event that he puts on, which now has 20,000 people that are going to show up over the course of the next four days, amazing event.

00:21:03.000 I'm telling everybody from students to just general members of the public, I had the opportunity to speak there last night and talk about what I was optimistic about for the future of the country.

00:21:13.000 I also got to announce a project that we at Daily Wire Plus are doing with Turning Point.

00:21:17.000 We'll announce that in just a few moments here on the show.

00:21:21.000 But it was a great event, really terrific event.

00:21:23.000 And what I talked about is the fact that I'm optimistic because President Trump is going to make the economy robust again.

00:21:30.000 He's going to make the economy dynamic again because Trump is a win-first guy.

00:21:33.000 He only wants the winning.

00:21:35.000 That's what he wants.

00:21:36.000 He's a total pragmatist.

00:21:37.000 He's a utilitarian pragmatist.

00:21:39.000 A lot of people, including me, have observed Donald Trump is not a conservative.

00:21:42.000 That's true.

00:21:43.000 He's not an ideological conservative, but his gut instincts are conservative because conservatism works in the real world.

00:21:49.000 And what Donald Trump cares about is what works.

00:21:52.000 When it comes to the economy, what works are free markets.

00:21:54.000 When it comes to the economy, what works is economic dynamism and innovation.

00:21:59.000 And Donald Trump knows that because he's a business person.

00:22:01.000 All President Trump really cares about is what works.

00:22:04.000 And when it comes to your kids, you should care about what works as well.

00:22:08.000 I've been thinking a lot lately about kids' nutrition.

00:22:09.000 You know how most kids' vitamins out there are basically candy with a vitamin label?

00:22:12.000 They're loaded with two teaspoons of sugar, artificial ingredients kids really don't need.

00:22:17.000 Actually, they shouldn't have, probably.

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00:22:22.000 The best part, zero sugar, still totally delicious.

00:22:25.000 Even the pickiest eaters would give these a thumbs up.

00:22:28.000 What really impresses me was learning about their ingredients list.

00:22:30.000 They've packed in 12 organic fruits and veggies plus 15 essential vitamins and minerals.

00:22:34.000 We're talking about vitamin D, B12, C, zinc, and more.

00:22:37.000 All the good stuff kids actually need to grow healthy.

00:22:39.000 And they've thought of everything.

00:22:40.000 It's non-GMO, vegan, allergen-free, thoroughly tested for safety, which means both you and I can feel confident giving our kids vitamins made to this high-quality standard.

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00:23:24.000 Get your kids the full-body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults.

00:23:27.000 Also, let me tell you about the holidays, the heart of family traditions.

00:23:30.000 You know, those precious moments of being together, whether you're decorating the tree or lighting the menorah or just sharing a meal.

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00:24:33.000 The reason I'm talking to so many...

00:24:35.000 Giant company founders these days.

00:24:37.000 All those founders are wildly optimistic about what's going to happen in the next four years.

00:24:41.000 Why?

00:24:41.000 Because at the very least, it's do no harm.

00:24:44.000 At the very least, you know this administration is not going to come in and start upending every ridiculous table they can find.

00:24:52.000 They're not going to come in and start talking about how business needs to be punished for its success.

00:24:58.000 They're not going to talk about how unionization, for example, is the cure for what ails America's economic situation.

00:25:07.000 They're not going to talk about how regulation is going to fix everything.

00:25:10.000 And that's not what this administration is about.

00:25:12.000 So you can look forward to a more robust economy under President Trump.

00:25:15.000 On foreign policy, you can look forward to solidification of foreign policy.

00:25:19.000 Joe Biden is the worst foreign policy president of my lifetime, which is an amazing thing to say, considering there's a man named Barack Obama who exists.

00:25:26.000 Joe Biden has been a horror show on foreign policy.

00:25:29.000 And as I've talked about, there is a Trump doctrine and the Trump doctrine is basically FAFO. The Trump doctrine is American citizens come first.

00:25:37.000 America comes first, which should be obvious. 0.97

00:25:39.000 But American citizens do have interests in what happens abroad.

00:25:43.000 So, for example, the freedom of the seas.

00:25:45.000 The freedom of the Taiwan Strait or the Malacca Strait, so that, you know, the free flow of goods can actually allow us to receive goods, products, and services in an affordable way.

00:25:54.000 The United States has an interest in the free flow of energy and oil, which is why we're interested in, say, Saudi Arabia, and also in drilling domestically.

00:26:02.000 We have an interest in curbing the regional ambitions of Iran, which is responsible for killing a vast bevy of American soldiers abroad, as well as targeting America's allies everywhere from the Middle East to Europe to South America. 0.94

00:26:14.000 We have an interest in containing China, the American public. 1.00

00:26:18.000 Perhaps China most of all, because China is not only stealing our intellectual property, China is not only threatening Taiwan, which is the source of all the semiconductors that are useful in sophisticated technology, China is not only threatening all of those various shipping channels that I mentioned earlier, China is also shipping the precursors for fentanyl into Mexico, and Mexico is then shipping those over the border via the drug cartels.

00:26:42.000 There are all sorts of foreign interests that Americans have.

00:26:45.000 Which brings us to the second point about Donald Trump's foreign policy, which is we should calibrate our action to the level of interest the American public has in the thing.

00:26:53.000 So if a bad thing is happening in some far-off land that's really bad, and if we can do something minor to help that, great.

00:26:58.000 But if it requires a serious commitment, it better be a serious matter to the American public.

00:27:03.000 And everybody ought to do their part.

00:27:05.000 So when it comes to Ukraine, when President Trump comes in and says NATO members need to pay their fair share, he is correct about that. 1.00

00:27:10.000 And he always was correct about that.

00:27:12.000 And then finally, if the United States is going to actually use force, we should use force in the most effective possible way.

00:27:18.000 The first sin in war is losing.

00:27:20.000 And Donald Trump is not a loser.

00:27:21.000 He will use the credible threat of force to actually get things done.

00:27:25.000 You can already see the world beginning to reshape around Donald Trump's foreign policy.

00:27:29.000 And finally, Donald Trump is going to get us back to some sense of normalcy.

00:27:33.000 The Democrats have decided that they're going to ride or die on the principle that the American family is somehow bad.

00:27:40.000 That the American family is somehow a repressive institution. 0.64

00:27:42.000 Churches are repressive institutions.

00:27:45.000 And basically, we should all think of ourselves as freewheeling, atomistic individuals that are bundles of sexual desires.

00:27:51.000 And if those sexual desires can be pleased on a momentary basis, well, then that's where true happiness comes from.

00:27:56.000 That is not the vision of happiness that the American dream promises.

00:28:00.000 You can see this, by the way, in the contrast between what Democrats think is weird and what Republicans think is weird.

00:28:04.000 Republicans think drag queen story hour is weird.

00:28:07.000 Because it's freaking weird.

00:28:07.000 Why?

00:28:10.000 Democrats think J.D. Vance is weird because he has a wife and kids, grew up in bad circumstances, and made something of himself after serving in the military, and then is vice president-elect at the ripe old age of 39. They think that guy's weird.

00:28:24.000 Normalcy is returning.

00:28:25.000 These are all things I talked about at the Turning Point conference yesterday.

00:28:28.000 We did a really nice Q&A. We'll put that up online for you to see.

00:28:31.000 It was great.

00:28:32.000 Got to interact with the crowd.

00:28:34.000 And I'm very optimistic.

00:28:36.000 That optimism rests on efficacy.

00:28:39.000 Donald Trump is coming into office with some obstacles, too.

00:28:42.000 Going into the next year, this is really important.

00:28:43.000 Donald Trump is not just coming in as the singular dictator who can determine exactly what he wants to do.

00:28:49.000 Everything that we love about the American government is also the thing that makes it hard to get things done in the American government.

00:28:55.000 When a Democrat like Joe Biden is in charge, you are very happy about the checks and balances.

00:28:59.000 And when a Republican is in charge, Republicans get frustrated with the checks and balances.

00:29:02.000 That's perfectly normal.

00:29:03.000 It's perfectly natural.

00:29:04.000 It's also why the checks and balances exist.

00:29:07.000 Right now, Donald Trump is going to enter office with, effectively speaking, a one-vote majority in the House.

00:29:12.000 That is an absolutely slim majority.

00:29:15.000 I mean, that is the slimest possible majority.

00:29:18.000 He's also going to enter office with a three-vote majority in the Senate.

00:29:22.000 Four, if you're counting, vote number 50, and then J.D. Vance breaking a tie.

00:29:25.000 These are not large majorities.

00:29:28.000 They're particularly not large majorities because there are a bunch of people who are moderate Republicans in purple districts in the House and in the Senate.

00:29:34.000 You have a few senators who are from purplish states.

00:29:39.000 And so what that means is that everything that Donald Trump wants that has to be gotten done legislatively is going to require compromise.

00:29:45.000 And that's going to require somebody to broker the compromise at the top level.

00:29:48.000 In this case, John Thune in the Senate and Mike Johnson in the House.

00:29:52.000 And so all of these sort of misplaced ire over the past 72 hours at Mike Johnson, as though Mike Johnson was just sort of freelancing and freewheeling when he came up with the Cromnibus package.

00:30:01.000 That's not true.

00:30:02.000 It's not true.

00:30:04.000 Now, we can argue over whether Speaker of the House Johnson made too many concessions in order to get the things that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance wanted in the original bill.

00:30:12.000 I would say, sure, there are some things in there that definitely should not have been in there.

00:30:15.000 And frankly, I'm glad that that version of the bill went down.

00:30:17.000 It had too much pork. 0.72

00:30:18.000 And as I said yesterday, I think the amount of disaster relief in the bill is excessive.

00:30:22.000 I think the farm subsidies are excessive.

00:30:26.000 However, blaming Johnson for that is ignoring the fact that there must be coordination, heavy coordination, between Donald Trump, who establishes what he would like to get done, Mike Johnson, who establishes what can get done in the House, and outside influencers who are pointing out the discrepancy between the two.

00:30:44.000 It does have to be this interplay.

00:30:46.000 Because otherwise, what you're going to end up with is a circular firing squad.

00:30:50.000 And that circular firing squad dynamic is what we've seen over the course of the past several days.

00:30:54.000 Now, I'm optimistic that it's going to stop.

00:30:56.000 I'm optimistic that there will be action by the House of Representatives to avoid a government shutdown.

00:31:01.000 Now, why does it matter whether there's a government shutdown?

00:31:03.000 Now, the truth is, it's not going to be the end of the world if there's a government shutdown.

00:31:06.000 We had a 35-day government shutdown back in 2018. The world did not end.

00:31:11.000 It was not particularly awful.

00:31:14.000 Lost productivity was like $3 billion, supposedly.

00:31:17.000 All the vital checks still went out, like Social Security.

00:31:20.000 So if there were to be a government shutdown, the media would play it as though the world was ending, the world would not be ending.

00:31:25.000 However, politically, it would not benefit President Trump to go into his new presidency, not only with a government shutdown, But also with having to presumably then deal with the fallout in the House.

00:31:37.000 That's not what you need if you're President Trump.

00:31:39.000 You need a machine that's ready to go day one.

00:31:43.000 That is the only focus.

00:31:44.000 It should be the only focus from the Trump administration.

00:31:46.000 I think now that reality is setting in, that will be the only focus from the Trump administration.

00:31:50.000 Get past this thing, get to the administration, and then coordinate everything between the leadership and the Congress.

00:31:59.000 Do that, and you can have an effective administration.

00:32:02.000 I'll give you an example of when the circular firing squad starts.

00:32:05.000 So, as we discussed yesterday, originally, the Cromnibus package, the continuing resolution, could have been done with just a three-page bill.

00:32:12.000 That says, we're going to continue to fund the government at current levels up through January 20th, or January 10th.

00:32:19.000 That could have been the bill.

00:32:20.000 Instead, Trump, Vance, Johnson, they all wanted disaster relief provisions in the bill because of the fallout from Hurricane Helene in North Carolina, among others.

00:32:29.000 And they also wanted farm subsidies in the bill because they believe that farmers have been shortchanged by the Democrats.

00:32:36.000 In order to get those things, you are going to need to make concessions to Democrats because there are some Republicans who would drop off the bill based on the spending levels.

00:32:45.000 In order to get those concessions, you'd have to give some concessions.

00:32:48.000 And some of those concessions, I think, were frankly wrong.

00:32:52.000 Other concessions, I think, were overblown.

00:32:54.000 So, for example, the idea that there was a pay raise for Congress that was 74, that's not true.

00:32:58.000 There's a cost of living adjustment for Congress.

00:33:01.000 Is that like a major issue in American politics?

00:33:03.000 I think it's a cheap demagogic issue.

00:33:05.000 Do I think it's like a huge issue?

00:33:06.000 Is that going to break the bank?

00:33:06.000 Not really.

00:33:08.000 Not particularly.

00:33:10.000 As far as the Global Engagement Center, a place that we literally sued, and that is a State Department offshoot, That engages in soft censorship.

00:33:19.000 My understanding is the reason that Republicans in the House, including Speaker Johnson, were willing to sort of make that concession is the assumption was as soon as Trump entered office, Secretary of State Rubio would come in and just kill the Global Engagement Center anyway.

00:33:30.000 So you can fund whatever you want.

00:33:32.000 He was going to kill it anyway.

00:33:33.000 With all of that said, the reality is it was it was not a good bill.

00:33:36.000 Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy pointed out all the flaws in the bill.

00:33:41.000 And President Trump and J.D. Vance, who had coordinated with Johnson on the bill, they decided that they didn't want the bill after all.

00:33:48.000 And so they decided to pull the bill and then suggest an alternative.

00:33:51.000 So yesterday played out as total chaos in the It played out as total chaos because, again, I think that reality is being sort of gradually accepted.

00:34:03.000 And the reality, as I mentioned yesterday, is that politics is a coalitional game.

00:34:06.000 The Republican caucus is very fractious, and they have an incredibly narrow majority.

00:34:09.000 And that means you're not going to get everything you want.

00:34:13.000 I'll explain in just one second.

00:34:15.000 First, as President Trump declared on election night, 2025 marks the beginning of America's new golden age.

00:34:20.000 We want you with us as we cover every minute of it.

00:34:22.000 Right now, get 50% off new annual Daily Wire Plus memberships.

00:34:25.000 That's an entire year of uncensored news premium entertainment, investigative reporting, live breaking news, and much more for half the price.

00:34:31.000 And, again, as I mentioned last night, Charlie Kirk and I kicked off AmericaFest with a major announcement.

00:34:36.000 The Daily Wire and Turning Point have joined forces for a new documentary, Identity Crisis.

00:34:41.000 It premieres January 10th on X. Inspired by what is a woman in this powerful film exposes the devastating harms of radical gender ideology. 0.98

00:34:48.000 Take a look at the trailer.

00:34:49.000 I've often said that gender affirming care is health care.

00:34:59.000 It is mental health care, and it can actually be suicide prevention care. - Oh!

00:35:04.000 I think I'm gonna take some medicine so I can kind of like transform into a boy, get surgery. 0.97

00:35:12.000 After the surgery, I didn't really feel any better.

00:35:15.000 When it stopped being a thing for adults and it started to be a, let's teach this to kids.

00:35:20.000 Total lie.

00:35:22.000 Manipulation.

00:35:22.000 It's gaslighting.

00:35:23.000 Please stop.

00:35:24.000 He's a boy, not a girl. 0.99

00:35:26.000 How could she do this to my son?

00:35:27.000 What they're talking about is hormonal therapy or sex reassignment surgery on children.

00:35:33.000 I thought fixing me externally would fix me internally.

00:35:38.000 But of course I was wrong.

00:35:39.000 The fact that the state thinks that they're more important and have a better say in what happens to your child over the actual parent's opinion is egregious.

00:35:47.000 Puberty blockers, surgeries, big money makers for hospitals, for physicians.

00:35:51.000 All I want to do is hold my son.

00:35:55.000 Are you asking me to lie to parents?

00:35:57.000 And he said, yes.

00:35:59.000 This is a weaponized use of a parent's sympathy and caring and concern by the left to destroy your child.

00:36:07.000 Let's tell kids that maybe they can be the opposite sex. 1.00

00:36:11.000 Maybe they actually are the opposite sex. 0.99

00:36:13.000 It is an evil thing to tell children that happiness lies on the other side of puberty blockers or double mastectomies.

00:36:21.000 The left so badly wants to blur these lines.

00:36:24.000 That's a five-alarm fire.

00:36:26.000 It's criminal.

00:36:27.000 It's criminal.

00:36:39.000 There's never been a better time to join.

00:36:40.000 Get a full year of Daily Wire Plus for half the price during our last chance sale.

00:36:44.000 Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe right now and join the fight.

00:36:48.000 Let's make 2025 the year America's golden age truly begins.

00:36:51.000 Alrighty, so after the death of the Cromnibus package at the hands of President Trump and Elon Musk, the new proposal that President Trump put forward was a continuing resolution That would include funding for, for example, farmers as well as disaster relief and also would increase the debt ceiling for two full years.

00:37:10.000 President Trump put out a statement in support of this proposal.

00:37:13.000 Again, Speaker Johnson has been coordinating with Trump every step of the way.

00:37:16.000 That is not a secret.

00:37:17.000 That's obviously public.

00:37:18.000 President Trump put out a statement saying, success in Washington.

00:37:21.000 Speaker Mike Johnson and the House have come to a very good deal for the American people.

00:37:24.000 The newly agreed to American Relief Act of 2024 will keep the government open, fund our great farmers and others, and provide relief for those severely impacted by the devastating hurricanes.

00:37:32.000 A very important piece vital to the America First agenda was added as well.

00:37:35.000 The date of the very unnecessary debt ceiling will be pushed out two years to January 30th, 2027. Now we can make America great again very quickly, which is what the people gave us a mandate to accomplish.

00:37:44.000 All Republicans, even Democrats, should do what is best for our country and vote yes for this bill tonight.

00:37:49.000 So Trump, of course, was very, very excited about this new revised package.

00:37:53.000 There is only one giant problem, which is that it went down to flaming defeat in the House.

00:37:58.000 And the reason it went down to flaming defeat in the House is because a lot of Republicans aren't actually all that fond of abolishing the debt ceiling.

00:38:04.000 Because the debt ceiling has been a tool for ratcheting back government spending as long as I've been covering politics.

00:38:04.000 Why?

00:38:09.000 I mean, going back decades at this point.

00:38:12.000 Many Democrats, we're not going to give Trump a win on this anyway, so you're not going to get any Democratic votes on this.

00:38:16.000 Among Republicans, there's a big problem.

00:38:19.000 A lot of Republicans believe that raising the debt ceiling for like a full two-year period is basically carte blanche to spend and spend and spend and spend into oblivion.

00:38:28.000 For example, Senator Rand Paul said there are proposals to raise it, there are proposals to eliminate it, I won't vote for that.

00:38:34.000 Representative Bob Good of Virginia?

00:38:37.000 is also openly opposed to the idea.

00:38:39.000 Many Republicans were openly opposed to the idea.

00:38:41.000 In fact, when this actual vote took place, 38 Republicans voted against it.

00:38:47.000 Those 38 Republicans included many very strong Trump allies, including people like Representative Thomas Massey, including Representative Nancy Mace, including Representative Chip Roy.

00:38:59.000 Now, Chip became the focus of the president's ire because Chip, who is a very staunch and very consistent conservative, Make no mistake, Chip Roy is not some sort of left-wing rhino-squish sellout.

00:39:10.000 It's absurd.

00:39:11.000 Here is Chip Roy explaining, listen, I'm not going to vote for a massive debt ceiling increase unless we get concomitant cuts.

00:39:16.000 That's what I'm here for.

00:39:18.000 I am absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go forward to the American people and say, you think this is fiscally responsible.

00:39:30.000 It is absolutely ridiculous.

00:39:35.000 Okay, President Trump then proceeded to rip into Chip Roy, suggesting that Chip Roy was, quote, the very unpopular congressman from Texas.

00:39:43.000 He's getting in the way, as usual, of having yet another great Republican victory, all for the sake of some cheap publicity for himself.

00:39:48.000 Republican obstructionists have to be done away with.

00:39:50.000 The Democrats are using them, and we can't let that happen.

00:39:52.000 Our country is far better off closing up for a period of time than it is agreeing to the things the Democrats want to force upon us.

00:39:57.000 Biden is president.

00:39:58.000 It's his obligation to properly lead.

00:40:00.000 We're there to do the right thing, and we can't agree with what Biden and the Democrats are demanding.

00:40:03.000 Weak and ineffective people like Chip have to be dismissed as being utterly unknowledgeable as to the ways of politics and as to making America great again.

00:40:10.000 Put America first and go for the victory, even if it means shutting down the government for a period of time.

00:40:14.000 We had an overwhelming victory just four weeks ago, and we're not going to let Democrats forget it so quickly.

00:40:18.000 Chip Roy is just another ambitious guy with no talent.

00:40:21.000 By the way, how is Bob Good doing?

00:40:22.000 Bob Good, of course, is primaried by somebody who's backed by Trump.

00:40:25.000 I hope some talented challengers are getting ready in the great state of Texas to go after Chip in the primary.

00:40:29.000 He won't have a chance.

00:40:31.000 And Roy responded saying, quote, my position's simple.

00:40:33.000 I'm not going to raise or suspend the debt ceiling racking up more debt without significant and real spending cuts attached to it.

00:40:37.000 I've been negotiating to that end.

00:40:39.000 No apologies.

00:40:40.000 Now again, Chip Roy is not wrong in this particular thing.

00:40:43.000 On an ideological level, the entire reason the Cromnibus was killed like two days ago is because it spent too much money.

00:40:50.000 And Chip is making the point, you don't raise the debt ceiling for two years if your intent is to not spend a lot of money.

00:40:57.000 So he's not going to do that unless he sees some cuts.

00:41:00.000 37 other Republicans agreed with him.

00:41:02.000 It turns out that politics is not just a matter of saying the thing.

00:41:04.000 You actually have to go negotiate the coalitional politics of the thing.

00:41:07.000 And this is where I am concerned about the future.

00:41:11.000 Listen, Democrats are not going to help Trump out no matter what.

00:41:14.000 We know this.

00:41:15.000 Even if Democrats agreed with the bill, they're not going to vote for it.

00:41:18.000 Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, he called the proposal laughable yesterday.

00:41:23.000 The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious.

00:41:29.000 It's laughable.

00:41:31.000 Extreme MAGA Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown.

00:41:37.000 Okay, and they're perfectly happy to have a government shutdown at this point because they believe that it will be blamed on President Trump.

00:41:42.000 And listen, Trump believes it will be blamed on Biden.

00:41:45.000 This is the problem.

00:41:45.000 No one cares about Biden.

00:41:46.000 Biden's dead.

00:41:47.000 Trump is at the center of American politics.

00:41:49.000 He is the black hole around which all gravity is now shaped.

00:41:53.000 And so, of course, he's going to be the center of the story.

00:41:57.000 He's always been the center of the story.

00:42:00.000 This is the point that Wolf Blitzer on CNN was making to Republicans.

00:42:03.000 How are you going to credibly blame this on Democrats?

00:42:05.000 Again, this actually is Democrats' fault.

00:42:07.000 Chuck Schumer prevented the normal appropriations process in the Senate from going forward.

00:42:10.000 That's why you end up with these year-end Cromnibus packages.

00:42:14.000 With that said, on just a PR level, when you have a deal that's been negotiated with presumably a level of approval from Trump and Vance, and then it gets undercut and then undersold and then destroyed, and then the replacement deal gets shut down by 38 Republicans, hard to say that that is about the Democrats rather than internal caucus warfare.

00:42:36.000 Let me just point out, Congressman, as of right now, if you take a look at the roll call, 31 of your fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives are voting against this current bill right now.

00:42:47.000 So how can you say this is the Democrats' fault when you're in the majority?

00:42:51.000 I love you, Wolf, but you've got to stop just trying to defend the Democrats here.

00:42:56.000 The fact is that we have a number of Republicans that have never voted for a continuing resolution, have never voted to lift the debt ceiling.

00:43:05.000 This bill requires two-thirds of the House, not an absolute majority.

00:43:10.000 It requires two-thirds.

00:43:11.000 So the fact that you have Democrats who normally would vote for this refusing to do so Not because they disagree with the CleanCR, not because they disagree with disaster relief, not because they disagree with aid to our farmers.

00:43:25.000 No, they're doing so because they're upset that the debt ceiling increase is being taken off the table as leverage for them in future negotiations.

00:43:35.000 That's what they're upset about.

00:43:36.000 And you know what, Wolf?

00:43:37.000 That's why Washington is broken.

00:43:41.000 Representative Lawler, he's not wrong here, but that's not the way they're going to play in the public view.

00:43:46.000 Now, what actually happens if there's a government shutdown?

00:43:48.000 As I say before, these tend to be very, very overblown.

00:43:51.000 But according to Axios, for thousands of non-essential federal employees, a shutdown means they stop working.

00:43:55.000 Now, the reality is they'll stop working for a short period of time, then the government shutdown will end, and they will go back to work.

00:44:00.000 During the last government shutdown, from December 2018 to January 2019, about 420,000 federal employees were required to work without pay, while another 350,000 were furloughed from their jobs without pay.

00:44:11.000 Accepted employees are those who keep working.

00:44:13.000 Their responsibilities include services like emergency work involving the safety of human life or the protection of property.

00:44:18.000 And then, of course, the federal employees are eligible for retroactive pay if they keep working while they're on the job.

00:44:23.000 So what exactly gets impacted?

00:44:24.000 Not Social Security.

00:44:27.000 Not SNAP, that's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs, food stamps.

00:44:31.000 Not veteran benefits.

00:44:33.000 Not passport issuance.

00:44:35.000 Not even education and student loans.

00:44:38.000 Pretty much national parks, Smithsonian Museum, all the things that the people in the media love to cover, but aren't sort of the day-to-day vital necessities of what people think of when they think of the government.

00:44:48.000 So on a realistic level, is it a huge deal if the government shuts down?

00:44:52.000 On a political level, is it good for President Trump to go into his administration with a government shutdown largely caused by a fractious Republican caucus?

00:44:52.000 No.

00:44:59.000 The answer there is no.

00:45:00.000 Republican Steve Womack of Arkansas, he points out that this is not going to redound to Republicans' benefit if there's a giant government shutdown right now.

00:45:08.000 Here's the problem with shutting the government down is eventually it has to be reopened.

00:45:14.000 And under what conditions would it be reopened?

00:45:17.000 If you are able to extract concessions from the other side, then that's one thing.

00:45:22.000 But if they're dug in and they're not going to give, Then, before long, you're going to see the real impact on everyday Americans that a government shutdown actually proposes.

00:45:34.000 And the results of that, I think, would be disastrous to both the new majorities in the House and the Senate and the incoming president.

00:45:44.000 So, where exactly do Republicans go from here?

00:45:47.000 Well, over at Punchbowl News, there's a lot of speculation by Jake Sherman, who does a good job over there covering the news, as to what exactly happens next.

00:45:54.000 And there are a few possibilities.

00:45:55.000 One is they go back to Plan A, the original deal that got shut down.

00:45:58.000 Possibility two is a clean CR, that short bill that says we continue funding probably through January 10th.

00:46:04.000 There is the possibility that they try the same thing again.

00:46:07.000 They try to go back to the board with the same bill.

00:46:09.000 I think that is unlikely.

00:46:12.000 They could also try a new negotiated settlement, theoretically, with Democrats.

00:46:16.000 Or they could just pass the bill from yesterday without the debt ceiling increase.

00:46:21.000 That includes the farm subsidies and includes the disaster relief and doesn't include some Democratic proposals and that doesn't have the debt ceiling increase.

00:46:28.000 And see if they can get that by the Republicans.

00:46:30.000 But the reality of politics is such, this is the thing that's important to remember going forward.

00:46:35.000 President Trump needs to be on the same page with the Speaker of the House.

00:46:38.000 Speaker of the House needs to be on the same page with President Trump, which I think has been happening.

00:46:41.000 Elon Musk needs to be on the same page with both.

00:46:44.000 Republicans need to be on the same page.

00:46:46.000 This is not rocket science here.

00:46:48.000 I mean, Elon Musk does rocket science.

00:46:50.000 This is not rocket science.

00:46:51.000 When you have a set of competing interests, all of which cancel one another out, what you end up with is gridlock.

00:46:55.000 Gridlock within the Republican caucus is not good for President Trump.

00:46:59.000 Now, there's been a bunch of hue and cry about how this is all Mike Johnson's fault.

00:47:03.000 What if Mike Johnson had done things differently?

00:47:04.000 And Mike Johnson was talking with the White House, with the Trump administration incoming, every day, all the time.

00:47:12.000 This is publicly reported.

00:47:14.000 And this sort of bizarre notion that if you defenestrate Mike Johnson, suddenly things get better.

00:47:19.000 I have a question.

00:47:20.000 When they defenestrated Kevin McCarthy, did things magically get wildly better?

00:47:24.000 I like Mike Johnson as a human.

00:47:26.000 I think he's much more conservative than Kevin McCarthy in his voting record and in his principles.

00:47:30.000 Also, he is the leader of a fractious caucus and the incentive structure did not change.

00:47:34.000 And the incentive structure is not going to change post-election.

00:47:39.000 It's not going to.

00:47:40.000 Post-inauguration, you're still going to have an incredibly narrow House majority, an incredibly narrow Senate majority, and President Trump and Elon outside, who is calling balls and strikes as to the spending.

00:47:49.000 Those incentive structures are not changing.

00:47:51.000 So, if people are not on the same page, replacing one or other of the players is not going to change the actual outcome of the process.

00:47:59.000 And this is the point.

00:48:00.000 Politics is difficult.

00:48:01.000 Coalition politics is particularly difficult.

00:48:04.000 And so all these sort of calls that I'm hearing from some in the commentary.

00:48:08.000 Oh, Mike Johnson blew it.

00:48:09.000 Oh, Mike Johnson is to blame.

00:48:11.000 Or Elon is to blame.

00:48:12.000 You're seeing a lot of Elon.

00:48:13.000 How could Elon do this?

00:48:14.000 Listen, Elon did what he was supposed to do.

00:48:16.000 He called balls and strikes on the bill.

00:48:18.000 Mike Johnson was coordinating with Trump.

00:48:21.000 And Trump...

00:48:22.000 Presumably heard the voice of the people and reversed himself.

00:48:24.000 This is not a blame game, and it shouldn't be a blame game, because theoretically, everyone should be on the same side.

00:48:29.000 But in order for that to work, you have to have better coordination and a better understanding by everyone involved as to how the sausage actually gets made.

00:48:36.000 Because the sort of pie in the sky, if I throw out a proposal, everyone will vote for it.

00:48:41.000 By the way, it's much easier to nix a proposal than get people to pass one.

00:48:45.000 Way easier to kill a bill than to get a bill actually passed.

00:48:48.000 Much, much, much easier.

00:48:49.000 You can kill bills all day long.

00:48:51.000 But the reality is that until you actually have the President of the United States working in tandem with a team that he likes to work with, them working in tandem with him, everybody understanding one another, you're going to get gridlocked.

00:49:05.000 I'm all for the messy game of politics, ushering in a better policy.

00:49:09.000 But when that mess becomes chaos, you don't even get the policy.

00:49:12.000 This is presumably why Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana said, listen, I think the President Trump should just tell us what he wants and then we'll try to work on it.

00:49:21.000 I think President Trump is going to have to consider coming to Washington.

00:49:26.000 I mean, let's face it, he's the president now.

00:49:29.000 It's not President Biden.

00:49:31.000 President Trump needs to sit down with Mike Johnson and John Thune and come up with a new skinny CR. If the president wants to do something on the debt limit, we need to find out what it is and put it in the bill.

00:49:43.000 And then the president's going to have to help Mike sell it in the House.

00:49:48.000 Democrats in the House are not going to go along with it.

00:49:51.000 Mike's problem, Speaker Johnson's problem, is that on the Republican side, he's got a bunch of free-range chickens.

00:49:58.000 I'm not criticizing them, but they wander off, and Mike can't catch all of them by himself.

00:50:05.000 This is right.

00:50:06.000 This is right.

00:50:07.000 The legislative process is a lot more complicated than putting out a statement on a social media platform by anyone.

00:50:14.000 This is why I say, we all have different jobs.

00:50:16.000 If you're a conservative, you have a different job, depending on what the job is.

00:50:20.000 If you're a commentator, it's to call out when conservatism is not being pursued.

00:50:24.000 And also to be honest about what is achievable.

00:50:25.000 If you're a politician, your job is to get 70% of the loaf.

00:50:28.000 All those interests are going to have to converge when Trump actually takes office.

00:50:31.000 Again, I'm not super concerned about the CR. I'm not super concerned even about a short-term government shutdown.

00:50:36.000 But Donald Trump has big, important priorities, and they need to get done.

00:50:40.000 And the only way you get a big border bill is if the sausage gets made.

00:50:46.000 The only way you're going to get tax cuts is if the sausage gets made.

00:50:49.000 The only way you're going to get all of the priorities that President Trump campaigned on and deserves to have passed because the American people elected him.

00:50:55.000 The only way that happens is if the process works.

00:50:58.000 And so the process working is really, really important.

00:51:01.000 Meanwhile, Democrats are reveling in the chaos in the Republican caucus.

00:51:05.000 They're trying to force a wedge between Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

00:51:08.000 What they're trying to do is suggest that Trump greenlit the bill, Elon Musk killed the bill, Trump followed Elon, therefore Elon is the real president.

00:51:14.000 The reason they're doing this is not because they think that's true.

00:51:16.000 Everyone knows Donald Trump is the actual president of the United States.

00:51:19.000 Everyone knows this.

00:51:20.000 The reason they're doing this is because they believe that if they keep saying that over and over, that Elon is the actual president running policy, then Trump will get frustrated with him and it'll create a personal gap between them.

00:51:30.000 That is the actual strategy that is being applied here.

00:51:32.000 That's why you see the cackling hyenas over at The View who are reveling in all of this.

00:51:38.000 As D.C. barrels towards yet another government shutdown, a bipartisan bill to keep the lights on was scrapped.

00:51:47.000 And it has a lot of folks asking, who is in charge?

00:51:53.000 Because I've been saying it for a while.

00:51:55.000 Yes, you have.

00:51:56.000 I've been saying that I think Elon Musk believes he's president.

00:52:01.000 I do.

00:52:02.000 Well, you've been calling him vice president.

00:52:03.000 I've called him vice president, I've called him president, because I don't know what J.D. is doing.

00:52:08.000 I hardly ever say.

00:52:09.000 I don't remember last time we even talked about J.D. You're right.

00:52:13.000 He's planning the presidency when they get rid of Trump.

00:52:16.000 So you think it's Musk Vance?

00:52:19.000 Possible.

00:52:22.000 What in the world are they talking about?

00:52:24.000 What in the world?

00:52:25.000 But again, the entire goal here is to create dissension in the ranks, which is why Republicans, why people who elected Trump should not engage in the internal firefight.

00:52:37.000 This is what Democrats want.

00:52:38.000 Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat from California.

00:52:40.000 Again, she is suggesting that Elon runs the government.

00:52:43.000 They know Elon doesn't run the government.

00:52:44.000 Elon isn't even a technical member of the government.

00:52:46.000 He has not been appointed in any official government capacity.

00:52:50.000 Doge is sort of an outside group.

00:52:52.000 My understanding is it doesn't require congressional approval.

00:52:55.000 Doesn't matter.

00:52:56.000 They're going to try and play this up.

00:52:58.000 It is really very clear to me that a non-elected billionaire, Elon Musk, has weighed in now and has put forth a message on Twitter from his phone that it's okay to shut has weighed in now and has put forth a message on Twitter from his phone that it's okay to The public is not going to tolerate that.

00:53:23.000 The Republicans are now breaking the deal that was negotiated.

00:53:28.000 The public wants bipartisanship.

00:53:30.000 Here we had a bipartisan agreement and to allow a billionaire whose wealth, quite frankly, I believe has doubled since the election to run our government really has grave consequences on the American people as it relates not only to the shutdown, but to the path forward in terms I believe has doubled since the election to run our government really . you Thank you.

00:53:52.000 Again, this is a goal.

00:53:53.000 The goal of theirs is to split apart the massive coalition that President Trump has built, which is led by figures like Elon Musk, who, again, was not a Republican until the last five minutes or so.

00:54:03.000 The Trump team has put out a statement about all of this.

00:54:06.000 They said, quote, As soon as President Trump released his official stance on the CR, Republicans on Capitol Hill echoed his point of view.

00:54:13.000 President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, full stop.

00:54:16.000 That remains true.

00:54:18.000 That remains true.

00:54:19.000 Better coordination, however, would definitely be helpful.

00:54:22.000 The grind of the legislative process is going to have back and forth.

00:54:26.000 I think it's very good that you have people like Elon and Vivek pointing out flaws in these bills.

00:54:31.000 With that said, there are going to be tough choices made in politics, including by President Trump, to pass stuff that ain't 100% of what everybody would like.

00:54:40.000 That is the job of the presidency.

00:54:43.000 And because that is Donald Trump's job and Mike Johnson's job, and because that's not the same job as many of the purists, We should just recognize that reality going forward or it's going to be very tough to get things done in a second Trump term.

00:54:54.000 When it comes to immigration, particularly, you need Mike Johnson.

00:54:57.000 They're negotiating an immigration bill.

00:54:59.000 You can substitute whoever you want.

00:55:01.000 You can change the incentive structure.

00:55:02.000 And that immigration bill, I'm sure, is going to contain things that a lot of people, like me, don't like.

00:55:07.000 The question with all of these bills is, net-net, is it good or is it bad?

00:55:10.000 Do you vote up or do you vote down?

00:55:13.000 That's the real question.

00:55:14.000 And that should be something that is known by all of the people who are in leadership positions before the thing even hits the public eye.

00:55:20.000 Alrighty, coming up, we're going to be joined by Bishop Robert Barron to talk about Christmas week.

00:55:25.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:55:26.000 Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 20, 2024

The Greatest SCANDAL In Modern Presidential History

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